deploy multiple disk-images w/o user interaction using PXE

Hi, it seems like I have a very special use case for PXE. At least I could not find any article, which describes whether it has been done yet.

Target: install disk-images to any PC, without user interaction on the target machine.

So my scenario is like that:

- one central server with disk-images and PXE/DHCPD-stuff and a webserver
- numerous clients PCs on which the images have to be installed

If no change for the machine is pending it has to boot from hard disc without changing BIOS settings.

Now the users should be able to deploy a certain disk-image to a selectable client machine by using a web interface running on the server. So, the server would have to change the DHCP/PXE configuration for the MAC address of the client PC and make it reboot (e.g. by using Windows RPC). Then, BartPE shall be booted to deploy the selected image. When the image was deployed successfully, PE notifies the server that the job completed. The server can now change the configuration of the that client to the default config (booting from hard drive) again.

Anyone ever done something like that?

The greatest problem I still see is that the servers have to be extremely configurable by configuration files or IPC. I would prefer a server that runs on windows, but I did not find one that can be controlled well by other applications.

Also, I am not sure about the choices for the default case. When there is no image to deploy, the PC should boot from hard disk. Is it better to make PXE timeout or to deploy a pxelinux, which chain-boots the hard drive?

Hi, it seems like I have a very special use case for PXE. At least I could not find any article, which describes whether it has been done yet.
...
Anyone ever done something like that?

There are a few commercial products for this. Symantec Ghost is one of them. Look for "re-imaging products" on an Internet search engine and you should find some. It seems that you are trying to develop your own. Is that right?

...Also, I am not sure about the choices for the default case. When there is no image to deploy, the PC should boot from hard disk. Is it better to make PXE timeout or to deploy a pxelinux, which chain-boots the hard drive?

PXELINUX does indeed have MAC address-based config-files as possibilities. See syslinux/doc/pxelinux.txt If you remove a client's MAC address-based config-file, the client will fall back to some default file, which could indeed chain to the local HDD. This approach seems reasonable, as long as the client does not race with the server and reboot before the file is written/removed.

I saw a youtube video on FOG, it looks sort of like what you are wanting:
http://www.fogproject.org/?q=node/1

I have not tried it but it did look pretty cool on the youtube video.

Yes, will develop something myself / adapt an open source software.

FOG really looks promising. Got to find out if I can hack Ghost image (sadly, I don't have a choice) support into it. I will tell you when I know more.

Thanks for all the tips so far.